South East Water chair and CEO resign following engineering failures

South East Water

SOUTH EAST WATER chair Chris Train and CEO David Hinton have resigned following intense criticism over the company’s handling of a string of engineering failures that caused major supply outages affecting more than 300,000 customers since 2020. 

Train stepped down in early May and Hinton followed last Friday after a committee of MPs accused the company’s leadership of presiding over an “unaccountable clique”. The committee’s report, published shortly before Train’s resignation, declared no confidence in South East Water’s senior management, describing the company as “devoid of proper leadership”. 

In response, South East Water said it would double investment into its network over the next five years. The company also issued an “unreserved apology” to customers impacted by its failures, “and the resulting loss of public trust in the company and its services”. Following Train’s departure, non-executive director Lisa Clement was appointed interim chair with immediate effect, while Hinton will remain in post through the summer. 

A key focus of the MPs’ report was coagulation failures at the Pembury water treatment works near Tunbridge Wells in Kent which left 24,000 customers without supply for two weeks in the run-up to Christmas last year, including two hospitals. 

Hinton and Train blamed the outage on changes in water chemistry caused by reduced groundwater levels, which they partly attributed to stretched supply caused by more people working from home, rendering the existing coagulant ineffective. However, this was rebuked by the chief drinking water inspector for England and Wales, Marcus Rink, who said the coagulant was suitable and the outage could have been avoided through more effective monitoring and improved filter performance. 

That incident was followed by a second outage weeks later caused by bursts at storage tanks during cold weather, affecting a further 25,000 customers. In March this year, regulator Ofwat proposed a £22m (US$30m) penalty for South East Water over five separate outages between 2020 and 2023 which affected a total of 286,000 customers. 

The MPs’ report was the first time the committee had investigated an individual water company, having previously focused on the privatised water sector across England and Wales more broadly. Committee chair Alistair Carmichael said the decision to explicitly declare no confidence in the company’s leadership – including an appeal to shareholders to act – was “unusual but necessary”, adding that MPs felt “obliged to highlight the gravity of this extraordinarily poor situation”. 

Carmichael referenced reports from South East Water customers stockpiling bottled water “because they fear the inevitable” would happen again. “In 21st century Britain that is an almost incredible state of affairs,” he added.

In addition, the report accused the company’s leadership of fostering a “clear culture of obfuscating responsibility that is seriously inhibiting their ability to analyse problems and learn lessons” and criticised the company’s attempt to secure an injunction against publication of Ofwat’s proposed penalty.

Carmichael welcomed the resignations, while environment secretary Emma Reynolds said: “This must mark the beginning of positive change at South East Water”.